Thompson v. Magnolia Petroleum Co.’s Empirical Analysis
309 U.S. 478 · 1940
Citation profile
516 federal appellate · 76 district · 57 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,523 later decisions (99 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2019 · most notably Railroad Commission v. Pullman Co. (1941), Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp. (1947)
516 federal appellate · 76 district · 57 state decisions — followed in 20 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Erie Co v. Tompkins · Isaacs v. Hobbs Tie & Timber Co. · Ex parte Baldwin · Foust v. Munson Steamship Lines
Cited together with Cline v. Kaplan · Railroad Commission v. Pullman Co. · Harrison v. Chamberlin · Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co. · Taubel-Scott-Kitzmiller Co. v. Fox
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 1,523 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A court of bankruptcy has an exclusive and nondelegable control over the administration of an estate in its possession. But the proper exercise of that control may, where the interests of the estate and the parties will best be served, lead the bankruptcy court to consent to submission to State courts of particular controversies involving unsettled questions of State property law and arising in the course of bankruptcy administration.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Bankruptcy courts have summary jurisdiction to adjudicate controversies relating to property over which they have actual or constructive possession. And the test of this jurisdiction is not title in but possession by the bankrupt at the time of the filing of the petition in bankruptcy.”
24 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“be decided only by interpretation, under Illinois law, of instruments granting the railroad its right of way.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.